Hunting and Gathering (15 page)

So it was complicated.

 
She didn't know where she belonged anymore, and besides, she liked Philibert. Why was she always berating herself—beating her breast, with clenched teeth? For the sake of her independence? What the hell kind of victory was that? She'd scarcely talked about anything else for years—and for what? How far had she come? To a dump where she spent her afternoons smoking one cigarette after the other, rehashing her destiny yet again? It was pathetic. She was pathetic. Here she was going to be twenty-seven years old and up to now she hadn't managed to produce a single thing she could call her own. No friends, no memories, not one reason to be the least bit kind to herself. What had happened? Why had she never managed to clasp her hands together and keep just two or three precious things between them?

 
Camille grew thoughtful. She felt rested. And when that sweet gangly monkey would come and read to her, then quietly shut the door behind him—rolling his eyes to the ceiling since that other baboon was listening to his “Zulu” music—Camille would smile at him and, for a moment, escape the force of the hurricane.

 
She had begun drawing again.

Just like that.

For no particular reason. For her own sake. For the pleasure of it.

 
She had picked out a new sketchbook, the last one she had, and broken it in by recording everything she saw around her: the fireplace, the designs on the drapes, the window catch, the goofy smiles of Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, the picture frames, the paintings themselves, the lady's cameo and the gentleman's severe-looking riding coat. A still life of her clothes with her belt buckle left on the floor; clouds, a vapor trail, the treetops beyond the ironwork of the balcony; and a self-portrait taken from her bed.

Because of the spots on the mirror and her short hair, she looked like a kid with chicken pox.

 
It felt as natural as breathing to be drawing again. Turning the pages without thinking, stopping only to pour a little India ink into a small dish and refill her pen. She had not felt this calm, this alive—so simply alive—for years.

 
But it was Philibert, the way he had about him, that she liked best of all. He would get so absorbed by his own stories, his face suddenly so expressive or passionate or crestfallen (oh, poor Marie Antoinette!), that she asked for permission to sketch him.

Of course he stuttered a bit in the beginning, a pure formality, then just as quickly forgot about the sound of the pen scratching across the paper.

 
Sometimes it went:

“ ‘But Madame d'Étampes did not fall in love in the same way as Madame de Châteaubriant, she could scarcely be satisfied with mere trifles. She dreamt above all of obtaining favors for herself and her family. Indeed, she had thirty brothers and sisters. Courageously, she set to work.

“ ‘She was clever, and she knew how to take advantage of every spare moment which the need to catch her breath between two spells of embracing afforded her, in order to wrench from the King—now sated and out of breath—the nominations or advances she desired.

“ ‘Finally, all the Pisseleu family were endowed with important duties, generally of an ecclesiastic nature, for the King's mistress was “the religious sort.”

“ ‘Antoine Seguin, her maternal uncle, became abbot of Fleury-sur-Loire, bishop of Orléans, cardinal, and finally, archbishop of Toulouse. Charles de Pisseleu, her second brother, had the abbey at Bourgueil and the Bishopric of Condom.' ”

 
He raised his head: “Condom. You have to admit it is rather naughty.”

 
And Camille would hurry to capture that particular smile, the amused rapture of a young man who could leaf his way through the history of France the way others would flip through a girlie magazine.

 
Or it might be something like:

“ ‘. . . as the prisons had become inadequate, Carrier, an all-powerful autocrat, surrounded by deserving collaborators, opened new jails and requisitioned ships in the harbor. Soon typhoid fever would ravage the thousands of people incarcerated in abominable conditions. The guillotine could not keep up, so the proconsul ordered that thousands of prisoners be shot, and to the firing squads he assigned a “burial corps.” Then, as the number of prisoners in the city continued to grow, he invented the drownings.

“ ‘For his part, General Westermann wrote: “Citizens of the Republic, the Vendée no longer exists. Beneath our saber of freedom, with its women and children it has died. I have buried it in the swamps and forests of Savenay. Upon your orders, I have crushed the children beneath the hooves of my horses and massacred the women who—these women at least—will no longer give birth to brigands. I do not have a single prisoner with which to reproach myself.” ' ”

 
And all it took was a shadow sketched across his tense face.

 
“Are you drawing or are you listening?”

“I'm listening while I draw.”

“That Westermann. That same monster who served his fine new motherland with so much fervor, well, just imagine, he was captured with Danton a few months later and lost his head alongside him.”

“Why?”

“Accused of cowardice. He was lukewarm.”

 
At other times Philibert would ask Camille's permission to sit in the wing chair and the two of them would read in silence.

“Philibert?”

“Mmm?”

“The postcards?”

“Yes?”

“Are you going to do that for long?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why don't you make this your profession? Why don't you try to become a historian or a professor? It would give you the right to delve into all those books during your working hours and you'd get paid as well!”

He put the tome down on the worn corduroy that covered his bony knees and removed his glasses to rub his eyes.

“I've tried. I have a degree in history and I took the entrance exam to the École des Chartes three times, but each time I failed.”

“You weren't good enough?”

“Oh, I was!” He blushed. “Well, at least, I think so, I humbly believe that, but I—I've never been able to take exams, I get too nervous, each time my eyesight gets worse, I can't sleep, I lose my hair and I even lose my teeth! And all my faculties. I read the questions, I know the answers, but I cannot write a single line. I sit there petrified, staring at the blank paper.”

“But you got your baccalaureate? And your degree?”

“Yes, but I paid the price. And never the first time around. And it really was not difficult. I got my degree without ever having set foot inside the Sorbonne, unless it was to go and listen to lectures by the great professors I admired, and who had nothing to do with my own curriculum.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-six.”

“But with your degree you could have been teaching, couldn't you?”

“Can you see me in a classroom with thirty kids?”

“Sure.”

“No. The very idea of addressing an audience, no matter how small, makes me break into a cold sweat. I . . . I have problems—I have problems . . . relating to people.”

“But in school? When you were little?”

“I didn't go to school until I was twelve. And, what's more, it was a boarding school. It was a horrible year. The worst in my life. As if they'd thrown me in at the deep end and I didn't know how to swim.”

“So what happened?”

“Nothing. I still don't know how to swim.”

“Literally or figuratively?”

“Both, General, sir.”

“You never learned how to swim?”

“No. What for?”

“Well, so you could go swimming!”

“Culturally, we come rather from a generation of foot soldiers and gunners, you know.”

“What on earth are you going on about? I'm not talking about going off to fight a war! I'm just talking about going to the seaside. And why didn't you go to school earlier to start with?”

“My mother was teaching us.”

“Like Saint Louis's mother?”

“Exactly.”

“What was her name again?”

“Blanche de Castille.”

“That's right. And why was that? Did you live too far away?”

“There was a local elementary school in the next village, but I only lasted a few days there.”

“How come?”

“Because it was a state school.”

“Oh, that old refrain about the revolutionaries, is that it?”

“That's it.”

“Hey, that was over two hundred years ago! Things have evolved a bit since then.”

“Changed, I don't deny. Evolved . . . I'm not sure.”

Camille looked at him in silence.

“Does that shock you?” said Philibert.

“No, no, I respect your . . .”

“My values?”

“Yes, I suppose, if that's the right word, but how do you make a living, then?”

“I sell postcards!”

“But that's wild. Unbelievable, what a story.”

“You know, compared to my parents, I have . . . evolved, as you say, I have acquired a certain distance, all the same.”

“What are they like?”

“Well . . .”

“Stuffed? Embalmed? Immersed in a jar of formaldehyde with the fleur-de-lys?”

“There is a bit of that, indeed,” he conceded, amused.

“Please tell me that they don't go around in one of those sedan chair things, do they?”

“No, but only because they can't find anyone to carry it for them anymore!”

“What do they do?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“For a living.”

“They own land.”

“That's all?”

“It involves a lot of work, you know.”

“But, uh . . . are you, like, very rich?”

“No, not at all. On the contrary.”

“What a wild story. And how did you manage at boarding school?”

“I managed. Thanks to Liddell and Scott.”

“Who were they?”

“They're not people. Liddell and Scott is a heavy Greek dictionary that I carried around in my schoolbag and that I used as a catapult. I would hold my bag by the strap, swing it to get momentum and—tallyho!—cleave the enemy in two.”

“And then?”

“Then what?”

“Well, now?”

“Well, my dear, now things are very simple, you have before your eyes a magnificent example of
Homo degeneraris
, that is, a creature totally incapable of life in society, out of synch, out to lunch, a perfect anachronism.”

Philibert was laughing.

“So how will you manage?”

“I do not know.”

“Are you seeing a shrink?”

“No, but I have met this young woman where I work, a sort of amusing, exhausting nutcase who has been badgering me to go with her to her drama class one evening. And she has been through every imaginable shrink in the book and she claims that the theater is much more effective.”

“Really?”

“That's what she says.”

“But other than that, do you ever go out? Don't you have friends? No like-minded people? Some contact with . . . the twenty-first century?”

“No, not a great deal. And you?”

30

LIFE returned to normal. Camille braved the cold when night fell to take the métro in the opposite direction from the laboring masses, and she observed all the strained faces.

Mothers who fell asleep with their mouths open against the steamy windows, on their way to pick up their kids in the poorer suburban neighborhoods; women covered in cheap costume jewelry briskly turning the pages of their
TV Week
with pointed, moistened index fingers; men in soft leather loafers and patterned socks highlighting improbable reports as they sighed noisily; young executives with greasy skin who passed the time playing Tetris on their not-yet-paid-for laptop computers.

And then all the others, those who did nothing more than cling instinctively to the strap to keep their balance. Those who saw nothing, no one. They didn't see the Christmas ads—golden days, golden gifts, salmon for next to nothing and foie gras at wholesale prices—nor their neighbor's newspaper, nor the bum with his outstretched hand and his whiny plea rehashed a thousand times over. Not even the young woman sitting just across from them, sketching their mournful gazes and the folds of their gray overcoats.

Camille exchanged a few pleasantries with the building security officer, got changed as she held on to her trolley, pulled on a pair of shapeless overalls and a turquoise nylon blouse that read
Professionals at your service
, and warmed up, occupying herself like a condemned man until it was time for the next blast of cold air, her umpteenth cigarette, and the last métro.

 
When Super Josy saw Camille, she rammed her fists deep into her pockets and her face creased into an almost tender grimace:

“Well, I'll be damned, here's a ghost. And I'm out ten euros,” she grumbled.

“Pardon?”

“A bet I had with the other girls. I didn't think you'd come back.”

“Why?”

“Dunno, just a gut feeling. But hey, no problem, I'll pay up. Okay, gang, we need to get a move on. Everything's getting trashed. To the point that you begin to wonder if these people's mothers ever showed them how to use a doormat. Just look at that, have you seen the corridor?”

Dragging her feet, Mamadou said to Camille: “You been sleeping like a big baby all week long, haven't you?”

“How'd you know?”